*My neighbor Barack*

By Rabbi Arnold J. Wolf (03/28/2008)

Not everyone can claim to be the neighbor of a Presidential candidate- I can, though, because I am Barack Obama's Chicago home is across the street from KAM Isaiah Israel, the Hyde Park synagogue at which I've served for 27 years. He spoke to our congregation as an Illinois state senator; more recently, his Secret Service agents have made use of our, shall we say, facilities. But it's not neighborly instinct that's led me to support the Obama candidacy: I support Barack Obama because he stands for what I believe, what our tradition demands.

We sometimes forget, but an integral part of that tradition is dialogue and a willingness to disagree. Certainly many who call me their rabbi have taken political positions far from mine - just as Barack Obama's opinions have differed from those of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

On March 18, the candidate gave a speech that made abundantly clear that he and Wright often disagree. Obama condemned Wright's "incendiary language," and "views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but... that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation."

Of course, race is only one issue on which Wright has stepped beyond the bounds of civil discourse. He's frequently made statements regarding Israel and the Jewish community that I find troubling. But to limit our understanding of Obama to the ill-conceived comments of the man who once led his church is dishonest and self-defeating.

Obama's strong positions on poverty and the climate, his early and consistent opposition to the Iraq War, his commitment to ending the Darfur genocide - all these speak directly to Jewish concerns. If we're sidetracked by Wright's words, we'll be working against these interests. After all, a preacher speaks to a congregation, not for the congregation.

Many people remain concerned that Obama isn'tcommitted to Israel. Some want him to fall in line behind the intransigent, conservative thinking that has silenced Jewish debate on Israeli policy and enabled the Bush Administration's criminal neglect of the diplomatic process. Clearly, though, anyone who thinks Obama waffles on Israel hasn't been paying attention. In 2007, he spoke to AIPAC about "a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel." Today, his website states clearly that America's "first and incontrovertible commitment in the Middle East must be to the security of Israel."

For my part, I've sometimes found Obama too cautious on Israel. He, like all our politicians, knows he mustn't stray too far from the conventional line, and that can be disappointing. But unlike anyone else on the stump, Obama has also made it clear that he'll broaden the dialogue. He knows what peace entails.

Speaking recently before a Jewish audience in Cleveland, Obama did the unthinkable - he challenged the room. He talked about the need to ask "difficult questions" on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: "I sat down with the head of Israeli security forces," he said "and his view of the Palestinians was incredibly nuanced.... There's good and there's bad, and he was willing to say sometimes we make mistakes... and if we're just pressing down on these folks constantly, without giving them some prospects for hope, that's not good for our security."

Yet, in spite of all of Obama's strengths, we've been loathe to admit a difficult truth: Among some American Jews, race plays a key role in the hesitation to support the Obama candidacy. We've forgotten that Black and Jewish America once shared a common vision. In the civil rights era, I and many in our community stood shoulder to shoulder with the giants of our generation, demanding freedom for all Americans.

Obama himself doesn't share our amnesia, however. "I would not be sitting here," he said in Cleveland, "if it were not for a whole host of Jewish Americans." That was literal truth, but not everyone remembers it.

I've worked with Obama for more than a decade, as has my son, alawyer who represents children and people with disabilities. He has admired Obama's dedication and skill as he worked on issues affecting our most vulnerable citizens.

Obama is no anti-Semite. He is not anti-Israel. He is one of our own, the one figure on the political scene who remembers our past, and has a real vision for repairing our present. Barack Obama is brilliant and open-hearted; he is wiser and more thoughtful than his former minister. He offers what America, Israel, and the Jewish community need: a US President willing to ask hard questions, and grapple with difficult answers. I am very proud to be his neighbor. I hope someday to visit him in the White House.

Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf is rabbi emeritus at Chicago's KAM Isaiah

Israel, Illinois's oldest Jewish congregation.

By Martha Burk

 August 26 is Women’s Equality Day. Most Americans don’t even know what it is, and aside from commemorations by a few female leaders on Capitol Hill, it is hardly noticed. But it marks one of the most important days of the last century for women -- the day the final state ratified the 19th Amendment in 1920 -- and women were granted the vote.

 That year also marked what suffragists of the time thought would soon be another constitutional milestone, the Equal Rights Amendment. With their newfound franchise, women believed they could convince legislators to put women on equal footing in the Constitution with men (white men from the beginning, black men since passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868). The ERA was penned by Alice Paul, the suffragist jailed for picketing the White House and nearly starved in Occoquan prison outside Washington.

 But it was not to be. Here we are, 87 years later – a lifetime in anyone’s book – and women still haven’t achieved equal constitutional status. First introduced in Congress in 1923, the ERA was not passed and sent to the states for ratification until 1972, with an artificial time limit of only seven years for approval by the states. In that brief time it was ratified by 35 states, but was stopped three states short by millions of corporate dollars backing Phyllis Schlafly's anti-woman storm troopers, who feared unisex toilets more than they valued freedom from discrimination.

 Most U.S. citizens don’t remember that fight, and many believe the ERA was ratified. The reality is that the legal rights women currently enjoy are not rooted in the Constitution, but in a series of statutes like the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, executive orders like affirmative action, and various rules interpreting laws such as Title IX, guaranteeing equal educational opportunity. Because we don’t have an ERA, depending on their origin, all of these can be revoked in the dead of night by any simple majority of Congress, bureaucrats in a hostile administration, or the president himself.

 George W. Bush and company know this very well. They have been systematically eroding the gains women have made since they took office. They have weakened Title IX through rule changes. A major one now allows schools to force girls, but not boys, to prove they are interested in participating in sports before they are given the chance to play, and so-called “separate but equal” single sex public schools are allowed for the first time since 1972.

 With the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, the assaults on women’s employment rights and legal abortions have begun in earnest. Wasting no time, the Court has already upheld the first federal abortion ban since Roe v. Wade, and severely limited women’s right to sue in cases where they’ve experienced pay discrimination.

 Recently renamed the Women's Equality Amendment by its chief sponsor, Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), the ERA is the essence of brevity: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." That’s the whole thing. A simple concept that had the blessing of both political parties until the Republicans struck it from their platform in 1980 and the Democrats followed suit in 2004.

 It’s high time the ERA was put back in the center of public debate, and this long election season is the perfect opportunity.

 Office seekers not remembering that right to vote we’re celebrating on the 26th do so at their peril. Women are now the majority of the electorate, and can control any election. Close to 80 percent of the public, both female and male, favor an Equal Rights Amendment. Candidates of both parties for the Congress and the presidency ought to be listening.

Burk is the director for the Corporate Accountability Project for the National Council of Women’s Organizations.

Copyright (C) 2007 by the American Forum. 8/07

By Timothy S. Carey

This month the Power Authority’s headquarters building in White Plains became the first retrofitted building in New York State to receive Gold certification by the US Green Building Council. The designation may seem obscure to most people. I think of it as a kind of environmental Good Housekeeping seal. It means that the building is not only highly efficient in its use of water and energy, but that it’s a healthy building to occupy, with an interior of filtered air, non-toxic paints and furnishings. What’s more, nearly every item used in the building is recyclable.

The idea is clearly catching on. On January 1 of this year, a law took effect in New York City requiring that most City-financed non-residential new construction and renovations be built to U.S. Green Building Council LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards. The McGraw Hill 2006 Smart Market Report forecasts by 2010 nearly ten percent of all new non-residential construction will be green.

The global corporate elite have joined the movement. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and even Toyota have moved into green buildings as have a number of prominent law, accounting and consulting firms. Employers are sold on them not simply because of their public relations value, but because studies show that green workplaces can boost productivity by as much as 15 percent a year – an added payback of between. $9000 and $10,500 per employee. Put another way, these buildings provide an annual rent rebate of $45 for every square foot of green space.

There are other selling points, too. When PNC Financial moved into its green building in Pittsburgh, employee turnover fell by 50 percent. At Toyota, absenteeism fell by 14 percent. And who wouldn’t be satisfied by a space that uses as little as half the electricity of a conventional building? Savings like that go right to the bottom line, which is why Barron’s Magazine predicts that trillions of dollars of conventional commercial real estate will dramatically lose their value unless these properties, too, are retrofitted to be green.

Four years ago, I led a team that created the nation's first "green" residential high-rise building: The Solaire, at 20 River Terrace in Battery Park City, which achieved levels of energy efficiency 35 percent greater than prescribed by the state's energy code. The Solaire consumes 65 percent less energy during peak summer periods than buildings of comparable size and relies on solar energy for 5 percent of the building's base electrical load. The building even includes its own wastewater treatment facility — the first in the nation inside a multi-family residential building — alongside another innovative system that re-uses storm water.

What I learned from this experience was that a green building can cost no more to build than a conventional building. What’s more, the operational savings from green buildings can be discounted over the building’s depreciable life to produce a much lower net present value. Better still, McGraw Hill reports that green buildings deliver much higher occupancy rates and rents. And on account of their relative scarcity and high desirability, green buildings return an annual average of 7.5 percent in net appreciation.

Green buildings are such a good idea that the New York Power Authority is putting its expertise in this area to help others. This year, our cumulative investment in energy-efficiency and other clean energy initiatives has surpassed $1 billion. This represents over 1,500 environmental makeovers at schools, police precincts, fire stations, hospitals, museums, libraries, and government buildings across New York State. The efficiency gains are equal to the displacement of 1.8 million barrels of imported oil a year and the avoidance of more than 750,000 tons of greenhouse gases. As Frank Lloyd Wright observed, “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”

Our activist judges threw another grenade on the concept of respect for our states' criminal laws founded on state constitutions, and not founded on the personal opinions of a few judges. The Supreme Court ruled that states can not apply capital punishment to someone convicted of a brutal and heinous murder, when the murderer was seventeen, as opposed to eighteen, at the time of his crime.

The judges pretend the issue is a matter of a "constitutional" right a brutal murderer has, because of his age. Their pretense is simply their personal preference. They made their ruling in spite of these well-known facts: The federal constitution is silent on capital punishment. The law under which the murderer was convicted is a state law, under a state constitution that permits capital punishment in his case (as would 18 other states). The Supreme Court has not ruled against the general application of capital punishment. Just fifteen years ago, the court admitted there was no basis to oppose capital punishment in exactly the same type of case for which the court now prohibits it.

How did our constitution come to have words and meaning it clearly did not have as recent as fifteen years ago? We have not amended it in the last fifteen years. We had no public referendum that said we demand the amending concept that the court now says it finds in the constitution.

What is the foundation in law and the constitution for their ruling? They have none. Their ruling does not try to uphold any legal requirement of existing law, or the constitution, which they are required to uphold. The five deciding judges based their decision on their personal beliefs and opinions about capital punishment, not applicable law and not what the constitution mandates. Their ruling abrogates your democratic and constitutional rights, as they grant to themselves the right to write a new constitution, by judicial fiat - one ruling at a time.

The critical question for our democracy is not whether or not your or I think capital punishment should or should not be used; or under what circumstances we think it should or should not be prohibited. The critical question is, if there is no constitutional right to immunity from capital punishment, then who can establish such a right? The constitutional answer is that only we, the people can do that, acting through the democratic process to amend the constitution. The people of nineteen states - the states affected by the recent judicial dictate - could, if they chose, change their state constitutions to ban the use of capital punishment. The people of those states have chosen not to do that. That is, or supposedly it was, their right.

The democratic basis of what the constitution says, and what it means is the heart of our nation's constitutional principles. It is also our highest democratic right. The operative phrase here is "we the people" not "we the court". The greatest responsibility of our highest state and federal courts is to defend, not abrogate what the people have democratically decided is the substance and meaning of our constitutions; until the people take the constitutionally mandated, democratic steps to change our constitutions.

If we cannot defend against the courts' assault on the democratic basis of our constitutions then there is no lessor democratic right the courts will not abrogate in time. By the constant application of judicial fiat, our nation becomes a democratic republic no more. "We" no longer rule, as in a democracy. We are ruled by a judicial oligarchy. The only "right" that legislating by judicial fiat advances is the courts' taking for themselves the right of a judicial dictatorship over the people, for which there is no constitutional mandate.

The benevolence that you think you see, in a court's dictating a new "right", is a false benevolence. It masks the tyranny that the court obtains for itself and its successors, by the means with which it takes over our power to grant that right. It strips away your right to the democratic basis of your constitution.

If there is some "right" that you believe your state or federal constitution should embody, then you not only should seek the establishment of that right in the law, you have an obligation to pursue that goal through the democratic means of amending the constitution. Judicial fiat can only achieve your goal by diminishing your highest personal right in a democratic republic - your right to live in a democracy.

Amending the constitution by judicial fiat in a democratic republic is the pronouncement of capital punishment on the democratic basis of the law and the government. If the democratic basis of the people's constitution is dead then the constitution is dead; long live the constitution

Tom Painter

March 23, 2005